The Sadness

by Benjamin Rybeck

Overview

Broke and homeless at 30, Kelly Enright flees Arizona. Returning to her hometown of Portland, ME, her only plan is to track down her estranged but well-off father. But her twin brother, Max, is living in their deceased mother's home, and if anyone's more screwed up than Kelly, it's disheveled, misanthropic Max.

Max has just one obsession: film. In particular, his own unfinished project from a decade earlier, which he believes is a masterpiece in the making. He dreams of completing it, but there’s a major problem: Evelyn, his actress and muse, has recently disappeared. After seeing her name in the credits of a famous cult film shot in their hometown, Max thinks Evelyn's disappearance has something to do with the film, and an upcoming festival devoted to it.

Kelly's arrival upsets Max's plans for finding Evelyn. Enter Penelope Hayward, the film's star and Kelly's high school best friend. Now a major Hollywood star, Penelope arrives in Portland as the festival's guest of honor.

As Max's search for his lost leading lady becomes increasingly, absurdly self-destructive, Kelly must help her brother, who has never recovered from their mother's death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939419927
Publisher:	The Unnamed Press
Publication date:	05/16/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	286
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Benjamin Rybeck is the marketing director at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, TX. He received an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona. His work has appeared in Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, The Nervous Breakdown, and elsewhere. The Sadness is his first novel. He lives in Houston, TX.

Editorial Reviews

04/04/2016
You don’t have to be a movie buff to appreciate Rybeck’s debut novel, but it helps to recognize the references to Hitchcock, Bergman, and others in this story featuring two fictional films made in Portland, Maine. The first film, a cult favorite titled Land Without Water, launches the career of hometown-girl-turned-B-list-Hollywood-starlet Penelope Hayward, who returns to the town for the annual festival honoring the film. The second is The Glazen Shelves, the brainchild of cinema nerd and aspiring writer/director Max Enright, still unfinished after 61 drafts. Max is searching for his film’s star, Evelyn Andersson, who has mysteriously disappeared, when Max’s twin sister (and Penelope’s former best friend), Kelly, returns to Portland. Homeless and unemployed, Kelly is searching for the father that abandoned the twins alongside their wild hippie mother when the twins were three. The mother died years later while away on what she claimed was a job interview. To recount interrelated stories of the siblings and the films, Rybeck uses a variety of forms including letters, a diary, and imaginary interviews. A few scenes over-reach but the characters experience memorable moments of self-awareness. Often humorous, sometimes touching, newcomer Rybeck’s tale of youthful woe portrays a generation full of promise as it runs aground. Agent: Greg Messina, Linwood Messina Literary Agency. (June)

Publishers Weekly

“The Sadness is a moody, fascinating novel about fame, disappointment, and the burdens of family. Benjamin Rybeck writes with equal authority about film and sibling relationships and romantic obsession, and tells a gripping story along the way.” —Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers

"The Sadness is a novel with film noir appeal: gritty and absorbing, with just a touch of glamour. Morally ambiguous siblings Kelly and Max, each compelled by their own obsessions and failures, succumb to the pull of home in order to resolve the crippling events of their pasts. With vivid, measured prose, Benjamin Rybeck delivers his characters from the depths of madness toward a quietly optimistic end, in which they discover something far more important than what they thought they were searching for: each other." —Chris Cander, author of Whisper Hollow

"The Sadness is a rapturous, absorbing and wholly original novel that announces Rybeck as a surprising and inventive young writer." —Kristen Radtke

"With this impressive debut, Benjamin Rybeck perfectly captures what it's like to be young and lost, unprepared for adult life, and utterly broken by the past. Rybeck has so much to say— about celebrity, cinema, family, and art as both a weapon and a shield— and he says it all with great intelligence and wit." —Mike Harvkey, author of In the Course of Human Events

"Benjamin Rybeck's The Sadness may be a first novel, but the control and assuredness of the writing makes it feel like the work of a much more experienced writer. It's a book full of wisdom about the fumbling, grasping attempts we all make to fill the emptiness inside us, a book that ultimately leaves the reader feeling less alone in the world." —Joshua Furst, author of The Sabotage Cafe

From the Publisher

2016-03-17
A brother and sister reunite in their Maine hometown for a few days of reckoning with their messy pasts, stalled presents, and art films. Max and Kelly are twins who don't have much to show for themselves as they exit their 20s. Kelly dropped out of college in Arizona and can't hold a steady job, while Max's biggest accomplishments are an unfinished film, The Glazen Shelves, and an obsession with its lead actress, who's gone missing. Kelly has returned to Portland because she has a line on her absent father, who might be able to assist her financially, but Max is disinclined to help—he's more fixated on the city's festival celebrating Land Without Water, a high-atmosphere, critically acclaimed film that was made in Portland. Perhaps that film's female lead, in town for the festival, can help Max center himself? These siblings are a troubled pair and, in Rybeck's hands, less cohesive and engaging than they have the potential to be. Max is meant to be socially inept, but at times comes off as borderline sociopathic, between incidents that involve near-kidnapping and public nudity. And Kelly, supposedly the centering figure, largely mopes through the proceedings. Such flaws, combined with some plodding prose and clumsy figurative language—"her skin looks stitched together from money" is an odd way to say somebody appears wealthy—make this novel feels as unfinished as Max's magnum opus. That's unfortunate, because Rybeck is an interesting thinker about movies, and the back and forths about film have the nerdy enthusiasm of a Criterion Collection commentary. The novel takes its title from a theory Max got from his mother about how a great movie feels "like the director was stranded on an island and starving and lonely and that cinema was the only way of escape." It's a nice concept for the nature of creative inspiration. But execution matters too. An overly clunky attempt to merge earthbound family drama and high-toned artsiness.

Kirkus Reviews